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April 3, 2017

An Author's Life: A Work of Love or the Love of Work

I never knew that being an author would make me so busy. Mostly, it's my own damn fault. I've put a few too many things on my plate. I miss the days when I could whizz through a book in just a few days. Now, it can take me up to a month to finish a title.

Of course, the most obvious change is that I have children. Long gone are the hour lunch breaks at Subway, reading a book on my phone. Weekends are filled with shuttling around the kids and taking care of chores that didn't get done during the week instead of binging on a best-selling novel.

On top of my normal household work and child care, I started writing. That led to researching publishing, building an author platform, designing and formatting a book, starting my social media presence, and trying to market my book. And if that wasn't enough, I offered to review a fellow author's book which is a retelling of Moby Dick on the moon. I haven't even finished reading it and have already volunteered to beta read a dystopian novel.

And you know what? I love it. I love all of it. I love writing and designing covers and discovering cool new books. Yes, formatting and marketing are a little rough, but I'm starting to get a hang of those, too. I've been editing my space opera and really like how it's turning out. The next novel I plan on publishing is getting a final revision before I can start sending out Advance Review Copies (if you'd like one, be sure to sign up for my newsletter). I was excited to get the first copy of The End of Refuge, but I'm really excited about getting a print copy of my next book. Maybe the third one will top them both, who knows.

They say, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Being an indie author is a ton of work, but it's been incredibly rewarding so far.

Talking about being an author, I have plans on continuing my "How to Write a Novel" series starting on Wednesday. No worries-- I haven't forgotten it ;-)